#543 Packers Unscripted: In a good place

all that will be made over the weekend. But before we get into some of those rules and ramifications, I want to talk about Aaron Rodgers media session over Zoom yesterday, which was after Wednesday's practice, because he uh, he was full of positive thoughts, full of positive attitude, and you know, it turns out it wasn't just a piece of two thousand ten practice film that he took out to the field with him when things started to click in for

him for camp this year. It sounds like he spent a good part of the off season reviewing a lot of his own film to get ready for this, as we like to call it, a season unlike any other. He showed up for camp with a whole different mental preparation that he went through, uh during the months of the pandemic and the quarantine period. Yeah, he really did, Mike, and it was interesting listening to speak. He talked to the media for about twenty minutes and and too Roger's credit.

Correct me if I'm wrong here. I don't remember him speaking this often in previous training camps. It would typically be a lot of Tim Boyle, a lot of the backup quarterbacks. But I would say he, I would say, he still usually would talk during training camp. Yeah, but um, but yeah, I couldn't remember. But this probably feeds into what I want to say, and that's it's this year

really left an impression on me. I don't know if it's the fact that he was able to be more reflective this offseason in what was going on and in his life and and how he wanted to approach football, but he's just had this different or about him. Jason Willdy had to ask the question, uh the way he did, which was, you know, guys are saying you're a lot more, you know, seemed to be having a good time, not that you necessarily were in a bad mood before, but

you're in a pretty good place right now. And honestly, Mike, I think we could kind of sense that too, just based on the three availabilities we've had with him this summer. He just seems very at peace and very at easy. Had his Mark Freaking Eating shirt on when he did his conference call. I mean, just was really chill. And the thing I keep thinking back to when he mentioned

the two thousand ten things we did. We talked a lot about the film and what he potentially saw in that practice tape or whatever tape it was that he picked up on. But I think if you go back and look at it ten years ago too, he was in an entirely different place. He wasn't the two time m v P. Yet, he wasn't the franchise quarterback. He was a really talented young guy who ended up leading a team to a super Bowl at twenty seven years old.

You wonder how much of that he wanted to be able to get back, and it just kind of get back to the loving nature of the game. I've sensed that I've noticed it and the way he actually is out there on the practice field, and he talked about Mark quisbelt is scantling in the way that he's impressed

him coming back this year. He's interacting with guys. The video that Olivia Reiner tweeted out from the press Casette and him, you know, throwing, the kind of joshing around a little bit with Boyle kicking the ball away from him. He just really seems to be having a good time. And to be honest with you, my going into the start of the regular season here and now ten days, I think that's a really good sign. I just think he's loose, he's comfortable, and during a time with so

much uncertainty, Aaron Rodgers just really seems to be himself. Yeah, And he he was talking a lot about where he is, both personally and professionally, and he talked about sort of in the offseason from a personal standpoint, finding his center a little bit, getting comfortable with just who he is, where he is in his life. That's all. That's all

fine and good. I was frankly fascinated in some ways by what he was talking about with the on the field stuff, and not that it was so much a groundbreaking um discussion, but a reminder in a sense of of how everything at the quarterback position works together and

how there's a chain reaction with everything. And he kind of went through it where it's like, Okay, his comfort level in the offense, he feels like he's got some better footwork and then the better footwork leads to being a little bit quicker through his progressions on the past plays, and being quicker through the progressions leads to better balance when he's dropping back in the pocket and and setting his feet, and then the better balance leads to better

accuracy with the throws. And it's like you can see, it's like everything is connected. There's there's this chain reaction. It's like you know that old schoolhouse rock you know song video that I used to watch as a kid. It's it's it's a reminder of how complex the quarterback position is and yet how easy somebody like Rogers, who was so experienced and so accomplished um can make it

look at times. And yet it sounds like he really went back and did a lot of studying of himself in the offseason, say, oh kay, how do I really get back to where I was when I was playing at my best? Even though I'm not as young as I used to be obviously, But how do I get back there? What's it going to take? And he's been he's been putting that chain reaction together and it showed on the practice field for sure these last few weeks. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I most of glad

you brought up a schoolhouse rock. I'm on the I'm on the northern end of that eighteen to thirty four demo now, So there might be more kids out there that don't know exactly what you're referring to, but I

did and I appreciated it. No, But the thing about the quarterback position, like, there's only two maybe three positions where I think you are able to actually four, and when you look at Larry Fitzgerald, probably four positions where you're able to kind of reinvent yourself throughout the course of career. A lot of times NFL careers don't last

long enough for you to evolve. Quarterback is one of those spots, though, And that's what kind of hit home with me with Rogers is that, yeah, there are certain things he's going to be able to do ten years ago that he wasn't able to do that he's not able to do now. But that goes vice versa. I mean, there's things that he's picked up on the last ten years. It's bringing back maybe some of those ideas. And again

this is all speculation on my part. He's not going to go into it right now, what he's seen or what he thinks. But I just think that when you have a fifteen year career like that, there's so much you can learn from not only knowing what you know now, but seeing what you did then and how that potentially equated to games. One. The thing that really does stand out to me, Thoway, is the second year in Matt Lafleur's offense. And you've talked about it a lot this summer.

I even wrote about this an Insider inbox. I don't know if you agreed with me or not, but you know, someone had asked if if he just you know where the offense is and and and are they you know, are they clicking and all those sort of things, And the way I looked at it was relative to the competition. I think they are much farther ahead right now than

they were last year. I think they look a lot better going into the regular season than they did last year, keeping in mind grading on a curve with everything that's happened with the COVID offseason, And to be honest with you, when this thing started a month ago and we started watching practices three weeks ago, I was really kind of holding my breath. I wasn't sure exactly how this was gonna look. You know, when you have a virtual off season program, you are going through the installs, you are

having the classroom sessions. But Mike, you've been on online classes, you know what these things are like. I mean, it's not always easy to keep someone's attention for six hours when you're just doing conversations and interactions this way. But to Matt Laflore's credit to Nathaniel Hackett, whatever they did during the virtual off season, it allowed them to really

pick up and every organization did it differently. But those words that Mark Murphy said right at the beginning of this pandemic, I think was probably the first comment out of the organization after we were all kind of in the holding pattern about how teams that respond the best to this are gonna be the ones that get out of the gate fastest we can. We will only know what we know when we see them get out on

the field at US Bank Stadium in two weeks. But agreement Packers, for my eye for what I thought this camp could be, really exceeded my expectations. Yeah, I mean, I think there's no question based on what Rogers said based on what we've seen from guys like Aaron Jones, Jamal Williams, Davante Adams, all of the main states on offense. Now, obviously the Packers still have to figure out exactly what's going on on the right side of the offensive line.

There are some depth chart decisions and whatnot that need to be made. But in terms of the main stays, the guys you know are gonna be there. You're gonna be counting on them every week. There's no question that being in the second year of the system has has put everybody just at a greater ease in terms of how to go how to go out and execute and

uh and and get the job done. So obviously the proof will be in the pudding, as you say, come the game against the Minnesota Vikings and and moving forward from there. But the big news that will be happening this weekend is by three pm Central Time on Saturday, that is the deadline by which the Packers and all teams in the NFL have to trim their rosters to

fifty three. Pretty much everybody has been at an eight man roster at this point, which is ten players less than the usual ninety man um at this stage of things, but the roster will be reduced to fifty three on Saturday afternoon, and then after a waiver period of slightly under twenty four hours, then teams can start to build their practice squads. Players that have cleared waivers, they can they can sign them with the practice squad. And there are a lot of different rules and and whatnot this

year with regard to the practice squad West. So I'll start with you. We can talk about this a little bit just to explain to the fans how things are going to be a little bit different this year after the cutdown to fifty three. There's some different rules and regulations that have been put in place because of the the COVID nineteen pandemic. Yeah. So the thing that's actually kind of eye opening with this, I was thinking about this coming into work today. This practice squad has doubled

in size in like four years. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. I remember listening to Mike McCarthy talk about this and probably must spent two thousand fourteen or fifteen when the ideas started coming out of moving it to ten. Well, then with the new c b A it was going to twelve, and then with the like two thousand two,

they're gonna go to fourteen. And then this year. One of the measures that they it in place, and this was put in place when teams weren't even allowed to bring guys in for workouts at the time, was a six team player practice squad with four of those players basically for the simplicity of this and you and I not having to read off a piece of paper, basically allowing any type of veteran to be on the practice

squad as well. In the past, there was originally there was a rule that if you were on an active roster for more than nine games in a season, you no longer were practice quade eligible. They threw that out a few years ago, which was a good move. The one thing I've been stumping for the last few years is until a guy reaches veteran vested status, they should

have the ability to be on a practice squad. I don't It doesn't make sense to me why you wouldn't want to give them that opportunity because for a veteran, I'm gonna use the example of jay Ron Elliott. It's been very tough for him to get going again here because he doesn't have any practice squad traditional availability left. So what I'm interested to see what the Packers do here is you always hate this process. Guys didn't get

preseason games to prove themselves. But at the same time, there are only eighty guys on the roster right now. They do have to get down to fifty three, but as soon as they're done with that the next day, they're gonna add sixteen more guys. They're gonna have sixty nine guys in practice on Monday at least eligible to practice. So in compared to what traditionally was the cutdowns, there isn't as many guys that are necessarily gonna not have

jobs come a week from now. But it's going to be seeing what the Packers decided to do with those four veteran spots. Do they use them? Do they just keep it with young guys. That's what I'm really fascinated by, because I have to be honest with you, I don't even know if those contracts have to be different than the than the traditional uh you know, practice squad salary, which has a base but really not a ceiling like our guys gonna be trying to get bigger deals out

of that. I don't know, but the fact of the matter is, without having these weekly workouts, are being able to have as much freedom to bring guys in or claim a guy like maybe you know Tyler Irvin and just have them play the next Sunday like they did

last year. They're gonna have to be a little bit more creative the last thing with the practice squad this year and actually moving forward now, I believe you have the ability to bring up guys on a weekly basis, two players from your practice squad to put on the game day roster, and they will get a game check and you can bring them back down without having to have this big waiver process and signing guys and cutting them like they had to do with Evan Bayliss last

year when they were working through some injuries at tight end. It's going to be fascinating. There has nothing, but never been anything like it before. It's the closest thing I think you're seeing too, like a Triple A minor league system in the NFL. And I'm personally as a nerd with this kind of stuff, I'm just captivated to see how teams go about utilizing this because I think there's

gonna be a lot of movement. Yeah, there's a couple of things that work here that is going to be uh you know, part of this process throughout the weekend. One is that without any preseason games, there isn't anything really for teams to study recent film of players on other teams who might get released and then be available

on waivers. So I think now not to say that there won't be any waiver claims across the league, I'm not saying that, but I think there's a there's a good chance that there will be fewer because you're just not gonna know as much about those players all you all, you still have to go on on somebody else's player, is their college film and where you had them ranked going into the draft, so to speak, as opposed to getting to see three or four games of preseason film

and go okay, yeah, that guy is actually better than a guy that we have here, so let's make a claim on him and put him on the roster. So with there being less of that going on, and as you said, West, there are a lot more restrictions this year as we get into the regular season in terms of bringing guys in for workouts, being able to sign a guy off the street, and then suit him up. You know, with the testing protocols and and other things, it's not going to be as as simple and as

easy as it used to be. So in that respect, you have the fifty three man roster four Week one against Minnesota, but there's gonna be just as much int as to who those six team guys are on the practice squad, because if you're going to be making roster moves here and there throughout the season, it's it's going to be, for the most part, be those guys on the practice squad, And looking at it from a math perspective, eighty guys in training camp if it's going to be

reduced to sixty nine, And as I said before, if you're not going to be claiming a bunch of guys from other teams, you're only really moving on in essence, from eleven players potentially from what you've had on the practice field so far this year. So you're gonna know a lot about these guys you're you're And then, as you said, the veteran exemptions and whatnot, how teams use those?

Are they going to have four and five and six year veterans like sort of in reserve ready to go if they need, you know, an extra guy for a game day, that kind of thing. So there are a lot of things that are going to be different this year.

I think it's going to be just as intriguing to see who ends up on the practice squad as who ends up on the fifty three because in a lot of way is that fifty three is just for week one, and there are a lot of things that could change about that active roster, even right away heading into game number two, after whatever happens on the first weekend. Yeah, and it's funny you mentioned that to about the eleven guys. Will in that eleven, you're gonna be counting in the

I R guys and the pup guys. They all get factored into that there might be like four guys that are actually not gonna be able to be on this year's team. I mean, that's just the way this process has gone, the I R thing. I'll bring that up now, well will I mentioned it? Now? You have the freedom.

Now the guys have to be carried through the fifty three man roster in order to do this, but you will have the freedom to designate those players to return at any point after three weeks and after three weeks usually it's six and then you have to be you know, a two week acclamation period. Now it's three weeks they can return to practice and then that opens a twenty

one day window for them to actually get activated. So there is gonna be so much flexibility compared to two thousand and twelve when this whole designated return things started in At the moment that Cedric Benson got the list, Frank the Packers had to say, okay, this is our player who's designated to return, and when he had to have surgery later in the season, that didn't matter. You just lost it and that was the only guy you could bring back on your fifty three man roster. I

like that. No longer a team is going to be in a position where they have to carry guys that are gonna maybe miss four or five six weeks, and then you know, you potentially you're putting out other guys that are banged up onto the field. They needed to eliminate that. I thought this was a good first step. And then also to mention this, someone else asked Insider in box, well do you think you know, with the

way they're doing these rules, now could veterans. Do you think you're probably gonna keep more veterans on the fifty three and you keep more young guys on the practice squad? Be honest with you, I'll be very interesting to see how the league handles this. I think you're gonna see more rookies on the fifty three, and I think you're gonna see more veterans that could potentially be brought up

for games around special teams on practice squads. I really do think that that's a possibility right now because teams wanting to protect investments of other prospects out there that other teams might have liked and not want them to get away. Mike, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, I will be glued to my computer, screen, my iPhone, my television, uh, seeing how these rosters take form before the Packers get back

out on the practice field Monday. It is going to be some heck of television to watch well as we get to Saturday afternoon and the selection of the fifty three man roster. I know you and I have some different thoughts on maybe what's gonna happen, maybe not. I just want to throw this question out your way. An undrafted rookie. Inevitably always there's at least one that makes the Packers fifty three man roster. I'm curious what you what would you set as sort of the over under

number this year on undrafted rookies? You think one? Do you think too? Like? What? What? What are your thoughts in terms of how many could h could make it in the quest start of the season. Yeah, great question. You know, last year there was only one. It was Darius Shepard and he was a tryout guy that really kind of blew me away. Now, there were some guys that stuck around on the practice squad and eventually got opportunities, but that was something that was kind of like, oh wow,

that was sort of eye opening. The one thing that has sort of changed with this is the Packers have actually been using that practice squad is more of a developed developmental system. So you've seen your your Robert Tonyans and some of these other guys sort of rise through the ranks and then they make the team for the first time, but they're not typically like undrafted rookies. So to your question, I would probably set the line at maybe one point five, maybe two point five. I think

for sure there's gonna be at least one. There's always one, and I think there's some really good candidates on this roster. But the great thing about this process is inevitably every year there's a couple of guys that make it that you're like, oh, I didn't see that happening. I didn't think like that. Now, that's the difference between West hot Coowits the digital reporter that goes home at night and place Pokemon versus Brian Goodakunst, who is doing this for

a living with all of his scouts. There's guys that they take a liking to that they want to get a deeper look at. But to your original thing, Mike, this is where it's gonna get interesting. It's gonna take organizations that had real interest in those undrafted rookies to bring them on and put them on a fifty three blind. I think there's been a lot of you know, nerves about that. I saw Mike McCarthy not wanting to put the jersey numbers on guys during the practice that they televised.

But at the end of the day, all these teams have to make really difficult decisions getting down to fifty three. There's always gonna be a couple of guys that get claimed. But I wonder if league wise, league wide, that number is going to be down just because you're you only have fifty three spots and you're gonna have to do a blind the original question, I'd say one point five

would be where I would set the line on that. Yeah, And just to clarify for fans on how this works when we talk about waiver claims and whatnot, if you claim someone on waivers, you have to make a spot for that player on your fifty three man roster. It's not you can. It's not being able to claim somebody on waivers and then say, oh, we're putting them on the practice squad. It doesn't work that way. A waiver claim means that guy has to be on your fifty three.

So then if you're at fifty three, you have to make a corresponding move and release somebody else in order to fit that guy in. And sometimes you know how this works west and again this is where this year it could be a little different than other years. But some of these calculations always come into play some of the final spots on Okay, who's gonna be on the fifty three, and who do you see if you can

clear waivers to get him onto the practice squad. Sometimes it's the personnel staff looking at what is the rest of the league's opinion of this guy, because if they're like, if nobody knows anything about this guy, but they know a lot about this other guy, and this guy has a good chance to get claimed and we lose him, that's the guy who goes on the fifty three, and the other guy that they don't know anything about probably

isn't going to get claimed. So then they're like, we still want to keep him around, so we'll waive him, but then bring him back to the practice squad. So those sometimes are the calculations is not even necessarily so much who's the better player, but who's the player that we have the best chance to still keep if we have to make him available to the rest of the league. So those sorts of machinations and calculations are are brought

into this two. It's it's one of those things you'd love to be a fly on the wall in, you know, the in the personnel room when they're they're talking about this stuff and making these decisions, But you know, the conversations go on. Sometimes you just don't know how extensive it is, how hard some decisions are, or how easy other decisions are when it comes right down to it. Well, and then again talking about how difficult it is sometimes for teams of open spots. I mean, Alan Lazard got

waived at the end of camp last year. That was I was surprised by that. I thought he had gotten a spot. Now they only had one between him and Darius Shephard. They went with Shephard, who was their kickoff and punt returner for the first few weeks. But then when a roster spot came open later that week, Lizard was elevated. But how that's how close you get to potentially losing him and just to go back and you know, now there were a couple of years down the road

you can talk about this. Basically, there was no chance that Tim Boyle was gonna get cut in two thousand eighteen. The packers had seemed too much. They wanted to have him in the fold, so they made that decision. This is a guy we can't you can't expose him. He showed too much. We like his arm too much, so he's gonna go in. Even I think that Kansas of the game at the end, could have went terrible and

Tim would have still ended up making the roster. But you see what's happened then, I mean, he's become a bona fide number two and a guy that they feel confident about behind Aaron Rodgers. Those are the decisions you have to make. You have to trust your gut. You usually have very little info to go off of. I mean, as much as you learn from those preseason games, they

are very vanilla. And again it's I'm sure there's gonna be some sleepless nights both in Green Day and across the league trying to hope that you get the guys you want, not only on your fifty three but also

when you're building that sixteen man practice sque Yeah. Well, we will have all the news for you on Packers dot Com late in the day on Saturday the fifty three man roster, and then some point late in the day on Sunday, we will hear from general manager Brian Goodacons to his media session will be streamed live on the website and through Sunday and Monday all the practice squad decisions will be made and Monday at practice, the goal is to have your sixty nine guys at least

for week one that that's what you uh, you move forward with. So it's gonna be a weekend of a lot of news and plenty to follow on packers dot com. But for now we will sign off caller to wrap on this edition of Packers Unscripted. Thank you for tuning in everybody for Wes I am Mike. We will see you next time.